Digging for Britain now in its 13th series is a popular BBC documentary series that showcases the most exciting archaeological discoveries and excavations happening across the UK each year, revealing new insights into Britain's past from prehistoric times to the Second World War.
Tori is a palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist who specialises in the Ice Age – where the human story, and archaeology really gets going. Her work has taken her from the fossil-rich caves of the Mediterranean islands, to the permafrost of Siberia in search of frozen mammoth carcasses.
Tori co-founded TrowelBlazers, an organisation dedicated to telling the stories of pioneering women in palaeontology, geology and archaeology. She is Senior Lecturer in the School of Biosciences at the University of Sheffield and leads the MSc Science Communications degree. She has presented a number of podcasts and TV and Radio programmes, including BBC Radio 4’s Hoax, the award-winning Wild Crimes, Our Broken Planet, Ice Age: Return of the Mammoth? (Channel 4/Science Channel), Woolly Mammoth The Autopsy (Channel 4/Smithsonian), T. rex Autopsy (National Geographic), Hannibal’s Elephant Army (Channel 4/PBS), as well as the series Bone Detectives, Shoreline Detectives/Britain at Low Tide, and Walking Through Time for Channel 4.
The new series started on BBC2 Wednesday 7th January 2026 and all episodes are available now on the BBC iPlayer.
“I am beyond thrilled to join the Digging for Britain team, and to be part of the UK’s longest-running archaeology programme. It has been such a joy and a privilege to have spent my summer with archaeologists and palaeontologists across the country as they uncover the secrets of our past, and then to share them with you all as part of the new presenting team. But, even more importantly, I am proud to be joining a programme that shows how science is really done – by groups of passionate people, working together to puzzle things out from the evidence.
We never know what discoveries will turn up, or how they might change our understanding of history, until those mattocks and trowels break the ground, and reveal themselves to expert eyes – that is the magic of archaeology, and Digging for Britain lets us all be a part of it. That is what makes it so special.”